The New Kid on the Block

There appears to be a new kid on the block shilling for Robert Deluce.

Around the end of April, the site, Friends of Billy Bishop Airport, popped up grass-roots style, actually sort of corporate grass roots style with text that sounds familiar, like it was lifted from the PorterPlans site.

Friends of Billy Bishop (the airport not the WWI aviator) looks to rally the masses. However, the copy (http://www.friendsofbillybishop.org/) reads like a page out of the Deluce Polling Questions and Marketing Handbook.

The contact is Joshua Strong at 140 Yonge St. 3rd Floor. Tel 647-556-2355.

Does this Joshua Strong sound like he’s qualified to run a Deluce-lite marketing campaign? Consider one of his listed qualifications.

Responsible for contacting, following up, and building relationships with potential voters by educating them about election issues; enabled understanding of key issues for Ontario voters.

Now substitute certain key words.

Responsible for contacting, following up, and building relationships with potential airport supporters by educating them about expansion issues; enabled understanding of key issues for Porter fans.

Maybe he is.

However, that this Josh Strong is a Tory like that other well-known Tory, Chairman Mark, proves nothing. It may be a different Josh Strong who is listed as the contact person.

So what if Chairman Mark once worked in a Tory PMO and was appointed by the current prime minister? That doesn’t mean that someone who is pumping for the Porter airport expansion has to be connected with the Tory party. Besides, Chairman Mark says the port authority takes no position on the Porter plans. Chairman mark is from the port authority. We can trust him.

There are probably many Josh Strongs in Toronto and the one running the Billy’s Friends website is probably doing so because he just loves the Porter convenience as do 75% of the airport customers who are frequent travellers of the business class.

It may well be a coincidence that the website contact person simply shares a name with Tory Josh Strong.

Be that as it may, Billy’s friend(s) are trying their darnedest to get bodies on their petition. On May 9, they had 261 signatures. They would be happy with 2,000. Today, five days later, they have 285.

Lately, Josh has been trolling on Deluce’s PorterPlans Twitter account for people to join him. That’s probably what accounts for the tremendous momentum over the last five days.

However, he might be even more successful if he had access to the Deluce database that magically turns entries into email letters of support to councillors at the simple click of a mouse.